Monday 1st Week of Lent
Order of Malta Evening of Recollection
Cathedral of Mary Our Queen
February 23, 2026
You Shall Love Your Neighbor as Yourself
In the reading from the Book of Leviticus, we hear familiar words: “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” As we heard, the Law of Moses spells out what love of neighbor means: treating our neighbors with honesty, respect, and generosity, caring for the vulnerable–the deaf and the blind—judging justly, avoiding slander, loving even that brother whom we may have to reprove, harboring no grudges. By loving our neighbor as ourselves, Leviticus teaches, we reflect in some measure the holiness of God.
In the Gospel of Matthew, Jesus says that he has come, not to abolish the Law (of Moses) but to fulfill it. In today’s Gospel passage, we see two things: First, how Jesus fulfilled the Law in himself, and Second, how Jesus wants the Law to be fulfilled in us.
How Jesus Fulfilled the Law
The setting is the Second Coming of Christ. Christ comes in glory and majesty to judge the living and the dead. He is surrounded by angels. He sits upon the throne of his glory. He alone has the power to assemble before him all the nations of the earth and to pronounce judgment upon them. What Jesus describes is not a myth or a vision but the culmination of human history & the fulfillment of God’s plan of salvation.
The Lord of Glory proceeds to separate the sheep from the goats. Jesus, the divine shepherd, knows us through and through. He knows who are the sheep of his pasture and those who are not. Jesus reaches this judgment infallibly, not by a lengthy judicial process, but divine intuition.
Only after pronouncing judgment does the Lord of Glory spell out the criteria of judgment: “I was hungry and you gave me food; thirsty and you gave me drink; naked and you clothed me; a stranger and you welcomed me; imprisoned and you visited me.” See how the Christ has fulfilled the Law, neither by rescinding it nor by reasserting it with additional force – but rather by unveiling its divine origins in his Person. As Son of God, he emptied himself of glory, becoming like us in all things but sin. As the Incarnate Son of God identified himself with the poor and the lowly; he embraced every form of human misery and suffering.
How the Law Is Fulfilled in Us
Henceforth, whatever we do for the hungry, the thirsty, the naked, the stranger, or the prisoner – we do for the Lord of Glory, the Judge of the living and the dead. “Jesus in his distressing disguises,” St. Teresa of Calcutta said unforgettably. Jesus in the anonymity of a homeless person, an abandoned person, someone in need of medical attention, someone languishing in prison, someone in our midst who came from elsewhere. This is where we encounter the Lord who emptied himself of glory.
When we embrace the poor and lowly, encountering them not as a problem to be solved but as persons made in the image of God, then it is that the Law of Love is fulfilled in us. Then we begin to shine from within with the glory of self-giving love such that the Father will see and love in us what he sees and loves in his own beloved Son. Then it is that we will hear the words we’ve longed to hear our whole life long: “Come, you blessed of my Father, inherit the Kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world.”